


Like Steel

by avadescent



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Compliant, Drabble Collection, F/M, Fluff, Friendship/Love, listen i just want more rivetra that is all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26892355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avadescent/pseuds/avadescent
Summary: #3: “You need to grow a dick,” is the first thing Levi says, when Petra’s recently adopted five (or maybe six) year-old wanders into the living room.#4: These ‘sparks’ are labelled ‘trust’ in her eyes.#5: “How was school today?” Petra ruffles his hair like nothing’s amiss and Levi shoots her a nasty look because heknowsshe knows that Eren’s firecracker energy today spells Impending Doom.#6: “Talking to you,” she says, “It’s like gravity.”#7: “You’ll have to pay for the damages.” It’s Dok on the other end, which only ruins his mood even further.
Relationships: Levi/Petra Ral
Comments: 25
Kudos: 63





	1. levi; after life.

**Author's Note:**

> / _Enters the fandom seven years after canonical death_
> 
> Cross-posting the handful of rivetra stuff I've written on Tumblr onto AO3 now that I feel a little more settled into this ~~rabbit hole~~ ship (I believe in Deus Ex Machina, Petra come baaack!)
> 
> Levi is serving his sentence in the afterlife in this one; it is a long overdue refund from the universe for everything he's lost.

> _**and death **— it is either the slice of a blade or the bite of a Titan.**** _

“Captain!”

The familiar call permeates through the fog like a lighthouse remaining steadfast in the swirling storms of the sea, and when he blinks his eyes open there’s no suffering, or loss, or disdain; there is only Petra, untouched and unbroken, smiling at him with a mouth whose jaw wasn’t dislodged and clinging to him with a hand whose skin wasn’t laced with a bite mark.

Behind her he can see the faces of the people he’s known and the people he’s loved, but it’s her at the forefront, and he recognizes the look on her face as the one of peace that she’s told him time and time again graced the faces of his soldiers as he held their hands and vowed his vengeance.

“You did it,” she whispers softly, the fulfillment of a promise. “You can rest now.”

Something within him that’s always longed to shatter finally breaks, and it is with a grateful sigh that he pulls Petra close, burying himself in her smell, the scent of soap.

His fingers thread through her hair and for the first time he feels like he’s thoroughly cleansed.

An exuberant laugh bursts behind his ear and then Isabel is in his arms, too. A patient huff brushes against his hair and he knows it’s Farlan’s hand on his shoulder. There’s his mother’s touch, light and warm, and there is Erwin’s smile, childlike and grateful. There’s Erd and Gunther and Oluo, bickering like the little shits they were over who should greet their captain first.

But he’s no longer a captain, he thinks. He is just a man, a pissy, laughable, horrible excuse for a man, and he is surrounded by all the people he’s lost, and while he can’t feel their heartbeats any longer he thinks he can find music in the way Petra fits against him, like an anchor against the seabed, like gravity.

He closes his eyes, allows the ghost of a smile to settle over his lips.

Petra was right, as always.


	2. petra; like soap.

> **_I don’t need a meadow to bask in the scent of you_ **

Petra smells like soap.

She doesn’t wear the floral-scented perfume of the high-class, nor does she reek of soil or manure like the low-class. She’s a soldier in his squad, trained in combat and hygiene both, and there is no room for trying on perfume when she will be pungent with sweat from training later anyway, no room for smelling like cow shit when the worst he’s ever had her clean are the stables.

Out of everyone in the squad, sans Levi himself, she’s the one who takes the most baths, so she always smells like military-issued soap. He knows because she’s always the one standing next to him, and past the whiff of laundry detergent that he catches from her sleeve as she passes him tea, the smell of soap inundates his nose, sharp and refreshing, undeniable.

And if he stares in the wake of her then it’s only because such a scent leaves her looking so genuine in his eyes, so strong and irresistible and attractive, like the pull of a filth-ridden boy’s dream for a home that was perpetually clean.


	3. levi; his kid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _(some modern-setting rivetra-parent au thing)_

“You need to grow a dick,” is the first thing Levi says, when Petra’s recently adopted five (or maybe six) year-old wanders into the living room with both a leak on his face and a leak in his pants, the latter of which is growing steadily larger by the second. 

His recently vaccuumed living room carpet is in danger.

“Wha-wha?” It sounds like Eren’s trying to say _what_ but he just got a tooth pulled out a week ago so to Levi he just further registers as a bumbling crybaby. The onslaught of tears burning down the boy’s cheek doesn’t help either—Petra’s admonished Levi many times for causing Eren to cry simply by looking at him.

_(“What am I supposed to do?” he’d asked, “Change the way I look?”_

_“You could try being a little nice, for once! Maybe a smile?”_

_“You want the boy to piss himself even_ further? _”)_

He shakes the memory from his head to focus on the task ahead, and it is with an irritable sigh that Levi leaves his work on the table and hurries to fetch him—geez, how much pee does this kid have in him?—before he’s whisking the boy off to the bathroom by the armpits.

They don’t have a child-potty yet, so it’s with trained efficiency that Levi serves as the boy’s sense of aim, leaving his pants to fall to the floor with a watery thud. 

“Go ahead kid,” Levi mutters, thoroughly incensed, “Piss off.”

Eren does so with much relief.

* * *

“You haven’t potty-trained him yet?” Oluo jokes later that week, during Sunday brunch. There’s an air of haughtiness to him that Levi still finds perpetually annoying, no matter how many times he finds it incredibly amusing when Petra tells him to just bite his tongue off and die.

“So what?” Petra defends, turning to wipe a smudge of thick mushroom soup dribbling from the corner of Eren’s mouth. “Eren’s doing his best, aren’t you?” she adds, nuzzling the boy’s nose with her own. He giggles at the touch, beaming widely.

“It doesn’t matter that he’s doing his best,” Oluo continues to tease, a self-satisfied I’m-going-to-say-something-absolutely-genial expression on his face, “If he’s going to be as short as his dad he’s never going to reach the toilet properly!”

Petra sends him a rightfully sour look; Levi’s face darkens in tandem, his mouth opening to fire off a retort.

“Piss off, Unc’a O’uo!” Eren yells, clutching onto his mother’s sleeve. The rest of his uncles stare at him in shock, and when Eren punctuates the sentiment by sticking his tongue out nastily, Levi only settles back into his seat with a self-satisfied smirk of his own.

“Well,” Eld breaks the silence, “He’s definitely like his dad all right.”


	4. petra; like sparks.

> **_these ‘sparks’ are labelled ‘trust’ in her eyes_ **

“Have trust for the people around you,” Petra says, and while her voice lacks condescension or sternness, Levi finds himself convicted by the firmness of her tone regardless—by the way her amber eyes burn into his own like rapid fire, like the shooting stars Isabel used to point out with vigor.

“It’s not a question of my trust but yours,” he replies abrasively, brushing past her with a displeased glare. “You hesitate on your turns and end up making me do all the work. You were chosen for this squad so _act_ like it.”

The final sentiment is directed less at her and more at the entire team as Gunther, Eld, and Oluo stare back at him with a strange reflection of whatever it is he sees on Petra’s face.

“With all due respect, Captain,” the girl is quick to answer, her tongue lashing out more harshly than it should. He should give her points for bravery—or minus points for shameless defiance. “You act like you can do everything on your own, and _you can,_ none of us here will deny that. But for some reason we were drafted to be under your command; a command which, I daresay, you fail spectacularly at giving.”

Well. This is _exactly_ why he leaves the ordering to Erwin, but he’s never going to admit that to a subordinate.

“Then maybe you should all pick up the pace and _start listening,”_ he snaps back. “I’m not going to scoop up the crap you’ll leave behind on the battlefield if you keep insisting on defying orders—”

“What orders?” She’s only two inches shorter than him so he can see her returning glare perfectly. “You tell us to ‘take it down’ and then what? We go off in separate ways, trying to take a Titan down how we each see fit. We’re not a team, Captain, we don’t train like one. Because _you_ don’t give us room to.”

“So what?” he gripes. “Is it my job to make sure we’re all holding hands and singing around a fucking campfire? I know you’re a fresh graduate, Ral, but I didn’t think you were that stupid.”

“And I didn’t think you were that _dense,_ Humanity’s Strongest,” she bites, and when his frustrated stare sharpens like flint and steel at the moniker their gazes clash to cause an eruption of sparks in her eyes.

The sound of a blade being drawn is sharp and distinct. Metal grinds against metal in a nauseating, satisfying way, and the way she’s reacting to him right now instigates the same feeling—the same exhilaration.

Fighting to him has never felt as synonymous to freedom as it does now, as she stares him down without restraint and calls him out on what a shitty job he’s been doing as a recently appointed Lance Corporal.

And it’s not his job to listen to her; in fact, it’s quite the opposite, so when he walks away only to force all four of his men onto the training grounds the next morning, he starts barking out orders like he wants to give her more than just adequate reasons to _listen._

(And listening, it seems, is the prerequisite to trust, because when her fifth successful assist of the day happens to be right by his side, he considers that perhaps Petra Ral is worth much more than he’d given her credit for.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I liked the imagery of Levi's grey eyes as flint and steel with Petra's amber ones as the resulting sparks.


	5. levi; science fair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Rivetra-Parent AU but _modern_ is still lodged in my brain, and apparently that translates into "Everyone in the Survey Corps are parents now!" 
> 
> What do I mean by that? You'll see.
> 
> Anyway, I decided that Levi & family go by Petra's last name in this one, as Levi canonically didn't seem to have a last name until Kenny revealed he was an Ackerman. In this AU he's still a badass little orphan, but that's in the days before becoming a parent, so instead of Ackermans the three of them are now Rals.

Eren bursts in through the front door like a high-powered locomotive on a one-way rail track, and as he kicks his shoes off expertly before striding into the meticulously polished threshold, Levi feels no need to act like an accommodating parent today and decides to leave Petra in charge of all the damage control.

She catches him by the sleeve before he can slither away from the kitchen however, and promptly threatens to make him sleep on the couch should he leave her to deal with their rambunctious thirteen year-old alone. Cleaning up is _his_ specialty, after all.

 _Really,_ Levi thinks as he seats himself once more, _Wives just have too much power sometimes._

“Eren!” Petra greets warmly as he rushes into the kitchen. Levi arches a brow, because Eren on a normal day is a big, bumbling, annoying idiot whose pent-up energy needs a thorough rain check; Eren _today_ looks like even more of a big, bumbling idiot than usual.

This is not good.

“How was school today?” Petra ruffles his hair like nothing’s amiss and Levi shoots her a nasty look because he _knows_ she knows that Eren’s firecracker energy today spells Impending Doom. Instead of giving them a colorful, sparkly show, Levi is quite sure they’ll be given an explosion and one hell of a kitchen to clean the longer they allow this overly excited version of their adopted son to linger.

“Good evening.”

The clear and pleasant (albeit slightly monotone) voice that greets them from the kitchen doorway causes Petra’s smile to widen even further—and Levi’s patience to wear thin.

“All right, spit it out,” he orders, crossing his arms in the hopes to get this over with as soon as possible. “What did you do this time?”

“Eren didn’t do anything!” another voice pipes up, a shock of blond peeking out from behind Mikasa’s scarf. When Levi’s perpetual glare settles on this poor, unsuspecting child, Armin hastily blurts out a mandatory: _“Yet.”_

“They just announced that the Science Fair’s coming up!” Eren informs, still too enthusiastic for Levi’s comfort, but that’s where Petra comes in.

“Are you planning to join the fair?” she asks, and to Mikasa and Armin, “Do your parents know that you’re here?”

“Yeah, but we had to go to Mikasa’s to ask for permission, that’s why I came home a little late,” Eren answers for his friends, his voice turning sheepish at the end, eyes darting nervously between his father and the floor (not that looking at the floor is alleviating his anxiousness in any way, Levi’s obsession with cleanliness stares him back in the face as glaringly as Levi’s gaze itself).

“So what,” his father bristles disapprovingly, “Are you going to build a baking soda volcano or something?”

“Or… something,” Eren supplies meagerly, and it doesn’t help that neither Mikasa nor Armin are offering any placating clarification or better yet: an explanation.

“And what exactly is this _something?”_ Petra asks, god bless her soul.

“We’re still working out the details!” Armin says, now looking as nervous as Eren. “So is it all right if we stay for dinner… sir, ma’am?”

Before Levi can open his mouth to deliver the big fat _No_ he’s been itching to deal out since Eren came crashing in, Petra shoves Eren and his friends in the direction of the stairs and says with what Levi can tell is genuine sweetness, “Of course! Levi will drive you guys home too, so don’t you go walking out in the streets at night, you hear?”

“Yeah, thanks!” Eren beams at her and then he’s rushing off with his friends to conspire. “Holler when dinner’s ready!”

“You mind the time, brat!” Levi snaps, having crossed the distance between him and his wife. “Either you come down on time for dinner or you’re getting leftovers.”

Eren blanches, and then he’s mock-saluting, used to his father’s attitude. “Aye aye, Captain!”

The kids disappear behind Eren’s door with a loud bang, and then Levi is whirling on his wife, displeasure evident in the crease of his brow. “You and I both know encouraging him was a bad idea.”

“For your kitchen, maybe,” she quips easily, all versions of his glare having lost its effect on her years ago.

“I’m not just talking about that,” he grouses in a tone that indicates he _is_ just talking about that. 

“Young adolescents need encouragement!” is her defense, and then she’s pushing past him. “Especially around his age.”

“Who told you that?” he scoffs, “The Parent-Teacher Association?”

The way she blushes slightly is telling enough. “Seriously?” He sounds genuinely shocked.

“He’s entering high school now, I’m just trying to be a little more… lenient.” She shrugs, and he absent-mindedly brushes her hair back from her face when it falls forward with the motion of her cutting the vegetables. “Let him spread his wings and all.”

“At a _Science Fair?”_ he replies incredulously. “You want him to end up like Shitty Glasses?”

“First of all, that is not how we regard friends in this household,” Petra scolds uselessly. “Second of all, why not? He seems excited about it.”

“Wait until he steals all your bleach to conduct hair-brained experiments,” he scoffs, and Petra rolls her eyes at his argument because the only one who cares for kidnapped bleach is him.

“Listen, they’re probably planning right now,” Petra begins.

“You mean Armin’s doing all the planning,” Levi interjects, grumbling.

“Exactly!” Petra beams like he just walked into her trap and he realizes a millisecond too late that he _did._

(Wives definitely have too much power.)

“Armin’s a smart boy and he knows how to keep Eren in check—remember that incident with the rock?”

She builds a solid argument and Levi has to admit that, albeit he does so with a bit of snark, flicking her hair like they’re still teenagers and sending her a complimentary _‘tch’_ sound to put a cherry on top of all his irritation.

Her muffled laugh at his reaction serves as a familiar response, and as they settle into a comfortable rhythm in their kitchen as they always do, she looks up at him with a considerate smile and aims to bargain, “We’ll just trust him with whatever it is he plans to do, okay? He came asking us for permission, after all. Teenagers I know would have run off and done whatever it is they wanted to without asking for anyone’s permission.”

The reference to his days as a rogue in the outskirts of the city is plain as day, but as always Petra manages to make it seem like something worthy of admiration—something _cool,_ and not at all something to be ashamed about. She’s always been one to see something for what it is, and Levi doesn’t doubt for a second that her admiration for him isn’t misguided at all, because he knows—he’s _learned—_ all the ways that Petra is genuine, and this is one of the ways.

So even though he’s usually the one calling the shots around here, for a rare occasion, he relents and listens to her.

“You can keep him in line if he goes too far,” she continues, and she sounds so sure that nothing will go wrong that Levi almost believes her, “Since you’re the only one who can do that.”

He huffs, flicking her hair again. “Are you stupid?” he asks, and the question has bite but he manages to relay it in a way that sounds so incredibly _fond,_ “You’re forgetting all the times he’s listened to you instead of me.”

“We’re even then.” She grins, and he’s a little surprised when she leans forward to press a chaste kiss to his cheek. “Thanks. You’re doing great.”

A thousand nights of doubting himself and his abilities as a caretaker weigh behind that last sentiment—a thousand nights of hurling insults into the sky at self-righteous parents who thought he was unfit for the job, a thousand nights of Petra sitting by him and letting him take his frustration out on the grimy state of their house’s outer walls because they were _wrong,_ because for all his crass he would _never_ walk away from his kid—and because this is Petra, he believes her.

And because this is Petra, he tilts his head to take advantage of their solitude, and dinner is delayed by a few minutes.

* * *

“So,” Eren preludes, his grin still far too exuberant for Levi’s liking, “We have a plan!”

Armin nods in tandem with the announcement, but his mouth is too full of mashed potatoes that he has yet to provide any input into this so-called plan.

“All right, we’re listening.” Petra opens the floor for discussion with a slight wave of her knife, and Levi finds the unconscious action amusing. Maybe this is why he does all the threatening in their relationship. “But first, when’s the Science Fair?”

“Two weeks from now,” Mikasa informs. “Eren wants to generate biodiesel.”

Levi and Petra blink. “He wants to _what?”_

“We’re going to store used cooking oil and treat it to remove impurities, then we’re going to subject it to transesterification in order to produce biodiesel that we can use to power a toy car or something,” Armin rushes to explain, though the looks of impervious ignorance gracing the adults’ faces does _not_ fade in the slightest, “We’re still working out the kinks, but it’s a solid plan and will most likely just take a week of trials, so we’ll be in time for the fair.”

“I’m making the posters,” Mikasa adds, as an afterthought.

“Hold on.” Petra shakes her head. “What’s this about biodiesel?”

“Biodiesel is an eco-friendly fuel source made from cooking oil!” Eren tells them enthusiastically, though he just sounds like he’s citing a Wikipedia article the way Hange prattles away about her experiments. Levi side-eyes Petra with a damning look of _‘I told you this would happen.’_

“Basically it’s like gas,” Armin explains, always ready to back Eren up with solid fact. “But it isn’t harmful to the environment. We’re thinking of creating biodiesel for the Science Fair, because—”

“It’s sure to win!” Eren interjects animatedly. “We’re going to beat that horse-face Jean and his potato arc reactor if it’s the last thing I do!”

 _‘Arc reactor?’_ Petra mouths confusedly, but Levi’s just as clueless as her.

“So basically…” Petra tries, and Levi continues her sentiment with a deadpan, “You want to turn my kitchen into a fucking power plant.”

A look of sure-fire guilt and hopeful excitement crosses Eren’s face at the fact that Levi understands exactly what they’re trying to do here—which could end in a disastrously good or a disastrously bad way, depending on how he takes it. (Eren made his friends promise to cross their fingers behind their backs while trying to convince Levi into allowing them to conduct experiments at home, just for that extra boost of luck.)

“Walk us through the methodology,” is the order that comes out of Levi’s mouth, but it’s leaning more towards that hopeful excitement than the sure-fire guilt from earlier, so Eren’s still revving in full throttle when he delivers a run-down of what he and Armin had discussed earlier, with the occasional input from Mikasa.

“We’re going to let Mikasa cook three hundred grams of chicken in three hundred grams of oil,” he starts slowly, so as not to lose his parents—or himself—in the process of explaining their project. “Because Armin said it should be a one-to-one ratio.”

Levi nods like he understands, so Eren continues, “Then we’re going to heat up the used oil at sixty degrees for about an hour to remove any moisture or impurities.”

“Hold on. How are you going to do that?” Petra asks, her brows furrowed. “What equipment are you going to use?”

“We’re going to borrow flasks from Mom’s lab,” Armin supplies, “We’ll put the used oil inside, then we’re going to heat the flasks in a pot—kind of like a water bath for the oil.”

“And that’s it? It becomes biodiesel?”

“Um.” Armin flushes embarrassedly. “Not exactly. That’s still the… first step.”

“How are you going to generate biodiesel then?” Levi crosses his arms derisively, like _this_ is the sign of Impending Doom he’d divined earlier.

“Well—we let it react,” Armin stutters, “With methanol. And sulfuric acid.”

There’s a long stretch of silence that pervades the dining table at the mention of hazardous chemicals, and Eren is tense the whole time, Armin quivering beside him and Mikasa coiled as though ready to spring into action at any moment, and some niggling part of these kids’ brains whispers in fright that _maybe_ they’ll find a dinner table flying at their faces at any given moment now, even though Levi hates it when he has to clean up after broken glass.

It doesn’t help at all that Petra is simply staring at him lengthily, as though waiting for him to say something. That means she’ll agree with whatever he decides and if he decides they can’t do it then that’s a promising project going right down the drain. Eren crosses his fingers harder.

“You better make sure we don’t get food poisoning,” Levi finally says, spooning vegetables into his mouth, and at the verdict both Eren and Petra look like they’re ready to bring him the entire fucking moon.

* * *

A few days later, Levi shuts the door in Hange’s face.

“Hey!” comes the muffled yell of outrage from outside. She seems to have brought bothersome company with her, because after that he’s being scolded.

“Levi, this is not how you should be treating your guests,” Erwin’s voice booms, but Levi can’t really bring himself to care, so he turns around and walks away, except he’s intercepted by Petra, who with her welcoming nature disrupts all his last-minute plans for a peaceful weekend.

“Hange, Erwin, wonderful to see you!” she greets, and the taller woman falls forward to press a grateful kiss to Petra’s cheek in return.

“Wonderful to see you too, unlike _some people,”_ Hange gripes, and if he were any younger Levi probably would have flipped her off in reply. Instead, he just passes his handkerchief to his wife with a grave aura about him, pointing to his cheek when Petra tilts her head at him in confusion.

“Is Aunt Zoë here!?” Eren yells from upstairs, but his parents find no need to give him a positive response when they can already hear him thundering down the stairs. “Aunt Zoë!”

“My little titan looks like he’s grown so _big!”_ Hange gushes, already accepting the firecracker that is Eren Ral into her open arms and swinging him around like a stuffed toy. Eren laughs, because then he’s swung into his Uncle Erwin’s arms too, who catches him with as much ease as it had taken Hange to pick him up. “What have you been feeding him, Petra? At this rate he’ll grow taller than Levi! You haven’t been giving him an overdose of Cherifer, have you?”

“The only person in overdose here is _you,_ Shitty Glasses,” Levi grouses, and Hange flicks his forehead in return.

“Where’s Armin?” Erwin asks, setting Eren down. “We’ve brought all the materials he asked for from Hange’s lab, so you should be ready to start your experiment.”

Armin and Mikasa hurry from the stairs just as Erwin asks, and the former is beaming up at the man with unreserved gratitude. “Thanks Dad!”

“No problem,” Erwin replies, patting his head. “Eren, you help me carry the stuff from the car.”

“Yessir!” Eren rushes outside with Erwin in tow, and as they do so Mikasa tugs on Petra’s sleeve.

“What is it, dear?” Petra smiles, and Mikasa looks up at her, that overcast gaze clouded with a steely determination.

“Ms. Ral,” she starts, “Can you show me how to cook fried chicken?”

* * *

The weekend is—and this is the understatement of the year—a Fucking Disaster.

Eren has managed to turn their kitchen into a laboratory this time, with a digital weighing scale plugged in next to the microwave and a big pot filled with three Erlenmeyer flasks settled upon Levi’s most prized possession: the induction stove.

He stands like a cactus in the corner of the kitchen—prickly and dry and harmful to anyone who comes within reach except maybe Petra—surveying the people who have invaded his home and who are now boiling three flasks of used cooking oil, methanol, and sulfuric acid inside his cooking pot.

He’ll have to buy a new cooking pot after this weekend if the way Hange’s leering over it is any indication.

Petra and Mikasa are situated by the stove, cooking batches of chicken thigh that Petra had him drive to the store to buy (he has to crack that Wife-Power thing before it does him in someday). Mikasa’s adept at learning and that applies here, as she whips out batch after batch of fried chicken and pours golden oil into a beaker for Hange to separate into a For Analysis test tube and a For Experiment flask.

Eren had tried to cook a chicken, but it had blackened as a consequence of his sporadic attention span.

So now he’s just the designated stirrer, since a water bath is these kids’ alternative for a three-neck batch reactor (as if Levi and Petra even know what the hell _that_ is) and the reaction needs to be stirred constantly, according to Hange and Armin, who parrot each other frequently regarding the methodology that now _everyone’s_ got it memorized. 

Even Levi, who stipulated earlier that he would _not_ be helping them turn his kitchen into a disaster zone whilst raising a spray bottle of self-concocted cleaning solvent in their faces like he was going to shoot them with it any second.

The first time Armin tries to pour a batch of oil into a flask for pre-treatment he’s shaking so badly under Levi’s dead-eyed stare that he accidentally spills everything. Levi’s muttering a string of profanities as he proceeds to do self-designated clean-up duty. 

Erwin pats the boy on the back and when he tries for the second time, Eren notices his uncanny ability to pour just enough oil into a flask to make 250 mL.

That sort of diverges into a little side-experiment where Hange encourages Armin to pour oil at a variety of different volumes—20 mL, 50 mL, 150 mL, and so on—and it vaguely reminds Levi of a drinking party when they cheer every single time Armin gets the exact measurement after one try.

It takes Petra asking them in learned Levi-fashion “what they’re trying to do” that everyone remembers they’re here for a biodiesel experiment and not an experiment to test Armin’s Hidden Talent (even though Levi’s 110% sure Hange has an entire encyclopedia dedicated to her son’s growth alone, and that’s _not_ including the record she’s probably kept of _Eren_ over the years, from all his baby teeth down to every single nail clipping).

They go back to watching over the cooking-pot slash water-bath, and Hange yells bloody murder when she realizes they’ve let the temperature get to one-hundred—Levi moves in anticipation of a coming explosion but _thankfully_ that doesn’t happen.

At some point Petra’s hand ghosts over his butt and he turns his head to snap at her for stealing his phone, but everyone’s suddenly back in Drinking Party mode as Petra records Mikasa flipping chicken thighs like they’re pancakes and aiming them at the plate Eren has raised a few feet away. Hange’s yelling in admiration and scribbling onto a notepad—Levi’s brows crease because since _when_ did she have a notepad—and then Hange asks like it’s the end of the world: “How do you manage to make every chicken land on the plate?”

Mikasa turns in that aloof manner of hers that Levi can respect, and then she’s saying: “I’m good at calculating angles.”

That gets Hange’s undivided attention for the rest of the hour, with Eren trying to get her back on track with reasons along the lines of, “We’re not here to study Mikasa’s eyeballs, Aunt Zoë!”

Levi thinks that maybe they all would have been arrested right there and then if anyone else had heard it—for fuck’s sake Erwin is the goddamn _Chief of Police,_ but all this so-called Chief-of-Police does is turn to look at Armin with a jovial smile and a politely asked, “So what’re we doing next?”

It’s midnight by the time Eren gets four rows of biodiesel samples to test on a toy car the next day—if he can _wake up_ to greet the next day, that is—and it’s nearly one in the morning by the time Levi’s got the entire kitchen spotless and all the trash (including Hange and company) out the door.

He crashes into bed after a quick three-minute shower, and he can barely question why the heck Eren is in their bed too before Petra rolls to curl into his side, sound asleep. 

He sighs in reluctant compliance, but it’s easy to sink between the warmth of Petra and Eren at his sides, and when he drifts off to sleep he thinks the comfort is well-rewarded after a rather tiring day.

* * *

The day of the Science Fair comes, and Levi looks bored as he scrutinizes all the other booths around them. He spots the mandatory baking soda volcano off to the side and decides Eren’s got this competition in the bag until he notices a horse-faced classmate flaunting some Potato Arc Reactor with much vigor. 

_“That’s_ the horse-face you were talking about?” Levi asks incredulously, because he hadn’t expected Eren to be accurate in his observation of the other boy. Eren nods in a manner that can’t be described as anything else but “repulsed”, his eyebrows scrunching in the middle like he’s itching to just punch the boy in the face. Which Levi won’t really mind—he thinks this fair could use a little more _flair._

“Well I think you’re definitely going to win!” Petra cheers, and her positive energy is the only boost Eren needs because when the panel of judges comes strolling by he leads the presentation and the demonstration of his project with what Levi deems is adequate decency.

“You three really made that?” one of them jeers. “I don’t believe you for a second—you seem to have used chemicals unavailable to high schoolers. Did you solicit outside help for this experiment?”

Eren, dumb and determined as always, doesn’t disappoint when he snaps back, “The only people we asked were our parents, and the guidelines say we can ask our parents!”

Another judge narrows his eyes—Levi recognizes him as Nile Dok, that annoying prat who usually leads the Parent-Teacher Association meetings, and he feels inclined to punch this man in the face and break a few teeth when he whirls on Petra to ask, like he’s ready to persecute the lot of them for breaking the rules, “And what exactly were your contributions to this project, Ms. Ral?”

The man stumbles back in surprise when Petra levels him with a stern glare and a just as sternly said, “I simply showed them how to cook the chicken to get their used oil, Mr. Dok. Nothing more than that.”

“Hm.” He studies her for a long moment before turning to face Levi instead, which would have been a huge mistake if they hadn’t been within school premises and Levi had all the room to demonstrate just how many ways he could break this man’s teeth. “And you, Mr. Ral? Did you contribute in any way to your son’s project?”

“Hah? Of course I contributed.” He shifts his weight onto one foot, and with an air of nonchalance that manages to qualify Eren for first place in this stupid competition, he says with all seriousness: 

“I ate the chicken.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **References and bibliography:**
> 
> If you want to know where I got the whole science fair/potato arc reactor idea, I got it from this [Spiderman Commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWYnbPvpRIM).
> 
> Transesterification of Biodiesel (for anyone who's interested):  
> [Sahar, Sadaf, S., Iqbal, J., Ullah, I., Bhatti, H. N., Nouren, S., … Iqbal. (2018). Biodiesel production from waste cooking oil: An efficient technique to convert waste into biodiesel. Sustainable Cities and Society, 41, 220–226. doi:10.1016/j.scs.2018.05.037](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VIOPxcE2MQyg3c6-wr6pJpZ2mkiX18N2/view?usp=sharing)


	6. levi; phone call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reread excerpts of Landline by Rainbow Rowell. Here’s the Rivetra take that just needed to happen.

“Talking to you,” she says, her voice muffled over the line as it is carried over thousands of miles, “It’s like gravity.”

“Gravity?” he repeats, and as he presses the phone closer to his ear he wonders why he can’t seem to recognize the words she’s speaking, even though he should. 

“Yeah, like flying,” she continues, and something in his head thinks that’s wrong somehow _._ A misplaced sentiment. “It’s like soaring through the sky on a wire, like being propelled through the streets on a tank of gas, one leap away from crashing through the sky. From crashing to the ground.”

“You contradict yourself a lot,” he says with a snort.

“So do you,” she answers bitterly, and he feels like he should be sorry. “Here and now. This is the only time I get to hear your voice like this.”

“And what exactly does my voice sound like to you?” he deadpans, crossing an arm. 

“Blunt,” she says, like she’s trying not to laugh. “Dry.”

Lucky for her, he seems to share her sense of humor. “I’ve been told one too many times that its dryness could rival the Dead Sea.”

“The Dead Sea?” she echoes, the way he says _gravity._ “No one here has seen the sea. Was it named after you?”

“No,” he clips himself off after self-awareness reminds him he was just about to call her retarded for suggesting such a thing. “What do you mean no one has seen the sea? It’s everywhere.”

“You must be pulling my leg here, captain,” she laughs, and he scowls, because there it is again: that unearned nickname.

“Don’t call me captain.”

“Levi,” she corrects softly, and she sounds almost wistful. “Why do you prefer I call you by your name only now? Why only now, and never any other time?”

“We haven’t met any other time,” he feels the need to point out. “Unless I should know you.”

There’s silence for a long while. Then there’s the sound of a mug tipping over, of a chair scraping back. 

“Captain,” and she seems desperate now, “You’re pulling my leg.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” It’s a familiar brand of annoyance that pervades his tone, but he gets the sense that she must be hearing something else entirely. Phone calls are like that sometimes; voices are warped.

“What do you _mean_ you don’t know me? It’s Petra, sir, Petra Ral. Your subordinate. I’ve been calling you every night since the first night and I’ve been wondering why the hell you look at me like you never—like we’ve never...”

“Petra Ral?” he says, and the name fits in his mouth like a new tooth. “I’ve never met a Petra Ral in my life. You’re the first, weirdo.”

There’s a shout over the line. A crash. He listens with slight amusement over the static spluttering that occurs over the line, which is one of the reasons he’s continued to pick up the phone every time it rings. 

He likes her voice. It’s fresh. Clean and clear.

“I’m done with you,” marks the end of her tirade, and then there’s the monotone ring of the telephone that signals the end of a call. He shrugs, placing it back onto its receiver, and stands with a stretch to mark off another day.

August 4, 1052.

The phone bill’s due date is around the corner. He huffs, deciding he’ll have to pay it for once. She’ll call again next week.


	7. eren; don't lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I know what this is? Nope. I just thought Eren would totally break a light switch with a drumstick during his middle school days.

He’s a temp and he’s in the middle of his fifth job—up on the skyrise, dangling from a few ropes, cleaning the windows because it makes him feel alive—when his phone rings. He shouldn’t have his phone on him in the first place (company policy) but he doesn’t give a shit about that and it’s always,  _ always  _ this job that gets the call.

He recognizes the number and his face scrunches into an irritated look. “What the fuck did he do this time?” he barks into the phone, because if these teachers find it fit to call him every single time Eren screws around then they’re getting their fair share of crass language too.

“You’ll have to pay for the damages.” It’s Dok on the other end, which only ruins his mood even further.

Levi has half a mind to let his phone ‘slip’ accidentally and imagine it’s Dok falling hundreds of feet through the air.

“Did you call Petra?” he says instead, because Petra’s got a knack for bargaining. In fact, he’d wager he decided to marry her the moment she managed to get him a good deal on some high-quality rags all those years ago. That’d be a poor wager though, Petra would probably come up with a better bet.

“You’re his listed contact,” Dok replies, which is his finicky way of saying  _ ‘calling her’s your problem, not mine’.  _

Levi almost lets the phone slip this time.

* * *

Levi’s the first to arrive—Petra said in twenty minutes—and five minutes have gone by with him staring prolongedly at Eren, who’s sitting by a classroom desk not looking sorry at all.

“So,” he says, deadpan, “You broke a light switch with a drumstick.”

“Um.” For a middle-schooler who should know better by now Eren only looks like he’s stuck in elementary when he didn’t know the difference between right and wrong (not that Levi is much of a role model in that department, either). “You want to know how I did it?”

“Do I look like I want to know how seriously crap your brain is?” Levi crosses his arms, and finally realizes what he found so off-putting about Eren’s predicament in the first place. “Where are those two puppies that are always following you around?”

Eren shrugs. “Beats me. How should I know?”

“They’re usually getting punished with you.”

“So? They tried to stop me this time.”

Since they’re in a classroom, Levi finds plenty of ammunition. Like a pencil case left on top of a random desk which he throws at Eren with full force.

“Hey!” Eren barely manages to dodge that, but Levi found a book too so now that’s being flung as well.

The teacher assigned to facilitate their ‘disciplinary talk’ looks like a new hire, so they stand abruptly from their desk and stay frozen like that, unsure of what to do in this situation. They end up giving out useless pleas to “stop”, to which Levi spares her the smallest of glances and the obligatory, “I believe pain is the most effective way.”

“Sir—!” The teacher cries helplessly at that, glancing between Levi (who looks, for all intents and purposes, murderous) and Eren (who looks, for all intents and purposes, scared out of his wits).

“Tell me what actually happened,” Levi says calmly, once he’s got Eren backed into the corner of a classroom and a desk stands between the boy and his dominant leg, the latter of which ready to deliver a final blow with a single push. 

“They told you already!” Eren yells, gesturing at the teacher who looks like they’re calling 911. 

“Yeah? I want to hear your version, or you’re sleeping on the streets tonight, pig.”

“I broke the light switch with the drumstick! That’s all!”

“You couldn’t play half-decent music even if you  _ tried,  _ idiot.” Levi applies force on the desk through his leg and threatens to squish Eren in the next five minutes. “Try harder. Where’d you get the fucking drumstick?”

“One of our classmates, it’s easy to swipe it from their bag—”

Another borderline fatal push. “I  _ said,  _ try harder.”

“I—” 

“I’m here!” Petra’s voice rings, the sound of the classroom door opening in tandem. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, Ms. Ral!” The new hire looks relieved, springing forward to grasp Petra’s hands in her own. “You’re right on time.  _ Please,  _ stop your husband.”

“Stop him from doing what?” Petra asks, bemused, and she tilts her head to find Levi’s stone cold gaze and Eren’s frantic one, as well as the path of destruction they’ve left in their wake. “Oh. Eren, were you lying again?”

“Was not—ow!”

“Was,” Levi mutters, crossing his arms. “If you aren’t going to tell me, then tell Petra, or you’re on cleaning duty for the rest of the month.”

“What happened to sleeping on the streets?” Eren grouses.

“Do you  _ want  _ to sleep on the streets?” Something thunderous and threatening ignites behind Levi’s stormy gaze, then. “That can be arranged.”

“No sleeping on the streets,” Petra scolds, striding over, “But maybe the living room floor will do.”

“Whatever,” Eren grumbles. 

“So?”

Eren looks up at Petra. “So what?”

“Don’t you owe your father an explanation?”

“Fuck that.” Eren scrunches his nose.

“Hold on.” Petra grabs Levi’s calf before he can break the desk against Eren’s stomach, her grip on it firm.

“Oi, Petra.” Levi doesn’t look pleased. She tries to bottle up a laugh.

“You’re both too stubborn for your own good.” Petra leans forward, and when he sees the glint in her eyes, Eren knows he’s doomed. “Mikasa and Armin told me everything on my way here.”

_ “They  _ told you?” both boys chorus, surprised. Levi’s brows crease. “Why the fuck didn’t they tell me then?”

“Armin’s scared of you, thought you’d do something like this,” Petra gestures toward the desk at  _ ‘this’,  _ “But I told him there’d be no stopping you if Eren doesn’t come clean himself. That said, can we take this home? I’m not paying for the damages  _ you  _ caused here, Levi.”

“Fine,” Levi grumbles.

Petra manages to do damage control in no time, getting the boys to clean up the classroom and assuring the new teacher that everything’s fine and  _ no, there’s no such thing as abuse in our household, what gave you that idea?  _

When all is said and done, they head home, Petra’s hands in Eren’s and Levi’s, both boys looking sullen and somewhat defeated.

“So why the fuck did you break the lightswitch with a drumstick?” Levi asks, when they’re near the car.

“Beats me,” Eren shrugs, just as stubborn.

“Petra—”

“Don’t tell him!” Eren yells, tugging on Petra’s hand. “Tell him and I’ll run away!”

“Tch. You wouldn’t survive one day on the streets, you pig.”

“Yes I would! Watch me!”

“I’ll watch you piss yourself on the first day out.”

Eren kicks the ground, frustrated at the lack of a reply. But his hand is still firmly wrapped in Petra’s, and she squeezes it, sending him a smile. “You’re going to have to live with your ignorance, Levi. You’re not exactly the best at getting information.”

“Only because my wife thinks I can’t handle it.”

“Hm.” She shrugs. “Eren will get embarrassed. Then he really  _ will  _ piss himself, and I don’t want to have to wash that.”

_ “Mom!”  _ Eren reddens. The sight of it serves to placate Levi’s own interests. 

He can always employ other methods to ask later, anyway.


End file.
